What does this mean? 128MB Hyper Memory(32MB VRAM on board)

[homestarmy]

I am looking at a cheap video card to give DVI output for a friend who will be connecting his computer to his HDTV and will run Media Center in the future.

I was looking at cheap x300SE cards and saw: 128MB Hyper Memory(32MB VRAM on board). What is this Hyper Memory concept? Some form of shared memory with only really 32MB onboard?

And will this run with Media Center? It says X300SE will work with media center on MS's site. And how does the X300 or X300SE compare with the 9600 or 9600XT cards?

On another note, the Geforce FX5200 will run with Media Center too, right?

 

[RobsTV]

It only has 32 meg of memory.

You can simply use that 32 megs, or use that 32 megs + what ever you assign from system memory, up to an additional 128 megs of shared memory, or you can disable onboard 32megs, and just use shared.

When using Hypermemory, the 32 megs is added to shared for new total. 32+ 128 = 160Meg video memory available.

So disadvantage is it can steal PC system memory.

An advantage of Hypermemory though is that video memory bandwidth from 32 meg dedicated onboard is added to bandwidth from what ever PC memory you share, to give you much higher bandwidth than either straight shared or straight dedicated would supply.

This is much faster than a FX5200 or ATi 9200se, as well as a little faster than ATi 9000/9200.
It compares to ATi 8500/9100 or nvidia Ti500 in speed.
ATi 9600's are faster.

Here it compares to Jetway A210 Pro socket 939 uATX motherboard, with onboard ATi x300 video (32 meg dedicated). Scores 2100 in 3dm2k3.

All the cards will run MCE.

 

[homestarmy]

Thank you very much! Your reply was quite thorough and addressed everything that I was looking for!

Additionally, there should not be any worries with running any of the cards mentioned to output HD signals, should there?

Or any issues running DVI-HDMI that I have not heard about with any of them?

 

[Munky]

Originally posted by: RobsTV
It only has 32 meg of memory.

You can simply use that 32 megs, or use that 32 megs + what ever you assign from system memory, up to an additional 128 megs of shared memory, or you can disable onboard 32megs, and just use shared.

When using Hypermemory, the 32 megs is added to shared for new total. 32+ 128 = 160Meg video memory available.

So disadvantage is it can steal PC system memory.

An advantage of Hypermemory though is that video memory bandwidth from 32 meg dedicated onboard is added to bandwidth from what ever PC memory you share, to give you much higher bandwidth than either straight shared or straight dedicated would supply.

This is much faster than a FX5200 or ATi 9200se, as well as a little faster than ATi 9000/9200.
It compares to ATi 8500/9100 or nvidia Ti500 in speed.
ATi 9600's are faster.

Here it compares to Jetway A210 Pro socket 939 uATX motherboard, with onboard ATi x300 video (32 meg dedicated). Scores 2100 in 3dm2k3.

All the cards will run MCE.

???

Unless Nv reinvented hypermemory since yesterday, that's not really the case. You're right about the part using system mem and only having 32mb onboard, but that is not nearly as good as having dedicated onboard mem. The 32mb onboard is using a 64bit bus, which has 1/2 the bandwidth of a 128-bit bus, and 1/4 bandwidth of the 256-bit bus. When you account for the fact that more expensive vga cards also use faster mem, the onboard 32mb has a lot less bandwidth than a non-HM card.

The system mem has even less bandwidth than the onboard mem, because the memory runs slower and has to be shared with the CPU as well. And since the data is not duplicated from system mem to onboard, there's no combined bandwidth effect, and even if there was, it would still be no match for dedicated onboard mem.

The bottom line - there's a reason why HM is only used on budget card: to cut costs. Full fledged onboard mem is miles ahead of HM when it comes to performance.

 

[homestarmy]

This is the bottom line for me...

This card will be used simply for running Windows XP Media Center Edition to watch TV and likely also HDTV on resolutions up to 1080i (likely less, more like a modified 720p actually).

Will this card work properly?

What would be the minimum card to use that is PCI-E?

How about AGP if I go that route? I know that my 9600XT's work fine for exactly this.

 

[Munky]

If you're not going to be playing any modern 3d games, then any half-decent card would be enough. There's no reason to go with agp, because its an older platform and is being phased out. I'm not sure what specific video capabilities you're looking for, but for general non-gaming use, HM is ok.

 

[homestarmy]

I don't forsee my friend doing any gaming, but my concern is with full 1080i playback and responsiveness within XP Media Center 2005.

I also want to be sure it will work fine with the future Media Center version in Vista.

Maybe a good middle of the road would be an X550?

 

[RobsTV]

Originally posted by: munky

???

Unless Nv reinvented hypermemory since yesterday, that's not really the case. You're right about the part using system mem and only having 32mb onboard, but that is not nearly as good as having dedicated onboard mem. The 32mb onboard is using a 64bit bus, which has 1/2 the bandwidth of a 128-bit bus, and 1/4 bandwidth of the 256-bit bus. When you account for the fact that more expensive vga cards also use faster mem, the onboard 32mb has a lot less bandwidth than a non-HM card.

The system mem has even less bandwidth than the onboard mem, because the memory runs slower and has to be shared with the CPU as well. And since the data is not duplicated from system mem to onboard, there's no combined bandwidth effect, and even if there was, it would still be no match for dedicated onboard mem.

The bottom line - there's a reason why HM is only used on budget card: to cut costs. Full fledged onboard mem is miles ahead of HM when it comes to performance.

Perhaps this will explain it better.
http://techreport.com/reviews/2005q2/hypermemory-turbocache/index.x?pg=1

"Radeon X300s are normally available with either a 64- or 128-bit memory bus, but the local memory interface for HyperMemory is limited to 64 bits. With local memory clocked at 300MHz (an effective 600MHz thanks to DDR's double data rate), HyperMemory cards should have 4.8GB/sec of local bandwidth. Combine that with 6.4GB/sec of system memory bandwidth, and HyperMemory cards boast over 11GB/sec of bandwidth overall, although there will invariably be a latency penalty associated with accessing system memory."



Far Cry 1024x768 test
onboard with no shared = 19.29FPS
Onboard with shared Hypermemory = 36.82FPS
Dedicated nvidia 6200 with Turbocache (Nvidia's similar but different memory sharing)
A low of 23.71 up to a high of 40.62, depending on how the dedicated card shares memory.

Faster than some dedicated cards? Absolutely!
An x300 using Hypermemory is MUCH faster than "dedicated cards" like nvidia FX5200/FX5700/ATi9200/9200se,etc.

In another forum about sat HDTV, I posted these results when question was CPU usage while running HDTV while still performing other tasks.
"With Opteron running at 2.7GHz (300x9), using onboard ATi, and checking numbers for you as I post and type on the same PC. Running everything else in WinXP like Norton AV, Norton IS, PCA, etc.

(each run solo below, not at the same time).
DVB-S SS2 and MT VuHD2 CPU = 52%.

Sasem OTA USB OnAir software HDTV 1080i = 26%. (SDTV of same channel shows 3%).

WMV-HD (Windows Media Player 10 defaults)
WMV-HD Amazing Caves 1080i(p?) = 52%
WMV-HD Speed 720p = 46%
WMV-HD Step into liquid 720p = 58% "



I do run OTA HDTV Sasem at the same time as DVB-S sat card.

 

[Munky]

Originally posted by: RobsTV
"Radeon X300s are normally available with either a 64- or 128-bit memory bus, but the local memory interface for HyperMemory is limited to 64 bits. With local memory clocked at 300MHz (an effective 600MHz thanks to DDR's double data rate), HyperMemory cards should have 4.8GB/sec of local bandwidth. Combine that with 6.4GB/sec of system memory bandwidth, and HyperMemory cards boast over 11GB/sec of bandwidth overall, although there will invariably be a latency penalty associated with accessing system memory."

Heh, I actually got HM confused with turbocache, but no matter, the basic principle is still the same

Anyway, the techreport explanation is rather simplistic. The latency penalty of fetching data from system mem will by far outweigh whatever extra bandwidth advantage it may offer, even if the card ever gets to use the full 6.4GB/s, which I doubt will ever happen.

But the point remains that HM is a compromise between cost and performance - there will never be a high end HM card because it's by far inferior to dedicated onboard mem.

 

[beggerking]

Both turbo cache and HyperMemory are bad..
avg about 1/2 speed of a regular card with dedicated memory..

I believe the included dedicated memory was used as cache to cache system memory to speed up the card, but it is never enough/ as good as dedicated memory.

 

[RobsTV]

Originally posted by: beggerking
Both turbo cache and HyperMemory are bad..
avg about 1/2 speed of a regular card with dedicated memory..

I believe the included dedicated memory was used as cache to cache system memory to speed up the card, but it is never enough/ as good as dedicated memory.

Everything is relative.
Worse compared to a good same model dedicated card (not 1/2, but maybe 10% at most).
But good compared to a bad "different model" card.
Forget terms or type for a moment.
Then see that x300 version is faster than 9200,9200se,6150,FX5200,FX5700 etc..
Then note that it is faster, even though those are dedicated cards, and it is onboard.
Sums it all up right there.
Proof that it is "better" than dedicated types of cards commonly used in budget systems.

To get noticably better than onboard ATi x300 would require at least an ATi 9600 add on video card. Even then, it would only be a slight improvement or about 20% faster going from onboard x300 to dedicated ATi 9600. (8000 Vs 10,000 3dm2k1se). In a game or Sim like Nascar Racing 2003 Season, the difference is even smaller, as same settings yield best rates of 38 FPS with onboard and 41 FPS wih ATi 9600 add on. (we LAN race a dozen PC's ever other Sat night, so test and tweak systems regularly). The entire Jetway 939 motherboard w/video and audio cost less than the ATi 9600 cost me!